Friday, July 30, 2010

CantoMundo, a master workshop and retreat, strives to cultivate a community of Latina/o poets by providing a culturally-grounded space for the creation, documentation, and critical analysis of Latina/o poetry. In this session, founders and fellows will reflect on launching the retreat-workshop and will discuss the significance of CantoMundo's efforts to connect training in craft with a focus on Latina/o aesthetic and social concerns. The session will also feature a reading by panelists-fellows.

A reading by authors who declare the U.S.-México Border a part of their creative identity. The poetry, stories, novels, and essays of these respected Chicana and Chicano voices are rooted on both sides of the international boundary. In their publications, the borderlands symbolize a more complex portrait of America’s boundaries than sensationalized headlines of drug smuggling and illegal immigration. Come witness these talented writers and poets who celebrate people more than mere politics.

Friday, July 23, 2010

Scheduled for publication by Ahsahta Press in May 2012, and edited by Joshua Corey & G.C. Waldrep, The Arcadia Project seeks to explore the relationship between the postmodern and the pastoral in contemporary North American poetry.

In the twenty-first century it is only a short leap from civilization and its discontents—from the violent inequities of the “global village”—to the postmodern pastoral. Postmodern and pastoral: two exhausted and empty cultural signifiers recharged and revivified by their apparent antipathy, united by the logic of mutual and nearly assured destruction. With gas and food prices climbing, with the planet’s accelerated warming, with the contraction of our cheap-energy economy and the rapid extinction of plant and animal species, both the flat world of global capitalism and the green world of fond memory are in the process of vanishing before our eyes. As Frederic Jameson once remarked, “It seems to be easier for us today to imagine the thoroughgoing deterioration of the earth and of nature than the breakdown of late capitalism; perhaps that is due to some weakness in our imaginations.” It is to that question of imagination—dystopian and utopian—that this anthology addresses itself.

Any work in English by writers working in North America that addresses the pastoral in a postmodern idiom, vocabulary, or context, or vice versa, is welcome. Please send up to 15 pages of poetry, in standard electronic format (PDF, .doc, .docx, .rtf, .wpd) to Joshua Corey & G.C. Waldrep at postmodernpastoral@gmail.com. Previously published work is acceptable; please provide acknowledgments or a publication history in that case.

Tuesday, July 13, 2010

A professor invites me to his “Black Lit” class; they’re reading Larson’s Passing. One of the black students says, “Sometimes light-skinned blacks think they can fool other blacks, but I can always tell,” looking right through me. After I tell them I am black, I ask the class, “Was I passing when I was just sitting here, before I told you?” A white woman shakes her head desperately, as if I had deliberately deceived her. She keeps examining my face, then turning away as if she hopes I’ll disappear. Why presume “passing” is based on what I leave out and not what she fills in? In one scene in the book, in a restaurant, she’s “passing,” though no one checked her at the door— “Hey, you black?” My father, who looked white, told me this story: every year when he’d go to get his driver’s license, the man at the window filling out the form would ask, “White or black?” pencil poised, without looking up. My father wouldn’t pass, but he might use silence to trap a devil. When he didn’t speak, the man would look up at my father’s face. “What did he write?” my father quizzed me.

Monday, July 12, 2010

first book interviews: steven d. schroeder*the above pic is my current writing space: my bed. the pic is part of aimee nezhukumatathil's post over at the pshares blog about writing spaces. other poets included are paul guest, rachel zucker, kim addonizio, jennifer chang, matthea harvey.

hint: click on the second pic in my part of the post to see which books i'm re/reading right now. *oscar bermeo's flickr cantomundo slideshow. thanks, oscar!*great news: aracelis girmay wins isabella gardner poetry award

Friday, July 02, 2010

Thursday, July 01, 2010

The sun is a Tudor arch sustaining the sky.In a moment it will fall. Blackbirdswith crimson suns on their wingssquawk in protest, and my sister,in lovely, billowy clothes from Anticipation,picks a sky-blue cornflower that she'll pressbetween the pages of the O.E.D.

In the lightless vault of wordsthe petal tips will caressan adjective from the Old French.

Now, as she strays through the field,she asks me if she's beginning to look likeOphelia -- she doesn't know why,she just imagines Ophelia long-hairedand pregnant -- and I say, "No, no,you're a terrible singer and much too sane,"

and she pulls her ample sleevestogether in a solemn, mandarin wayand bows to the birds startlingthe sky and bows to the dying sunand bows to me, her younger brother,who wants nothing more of the worldthan to salt the stream before herthat she may float and floatand never drown.

i'm spending my thursday night at a starbucks. so sad.*bought a new watch today. it has a deep blue face. and a steel gray metal band.*by this time next week i will be in albuquerque living it up with other cantomundo fellows. *i also bought two new shirts today. aren't you excited??*someone asked me if i going to blog from the cantomundo retreat and the answer is yes. i will be posting my impressions and some pics. *chickens!